Page 43 of Her Ex's Father
“What do you think you’re doing?” The words are cold and flat.
He turns slowly. “I’m doing everything I can to keep my patient safe, Benedict. And as I’m sure you’re aware, your lodge is a place where those in need are easily overlooked.”
Fury sweeps through me like a fire. Furman has a few years on me, an illustrious career as a doctor known for precise diagnoses of confusing conditions. Under his care, Georgiana didn’t flourish, but she was comfortable.
Right up until the end.
Which he thinks I caused.
“Don’t forget your place,” I warn. “Don’t go making accusations you can’t support, Doctor.”
He looks at me long and hard but doesn’t press the issue further—doesn’t come out and say what he’s obviously assumed all these years. Furman turns and moves quickly down the stairs, out the door, and into the bright spring afternoon.
Madeline stares down at her lap, twisting the blanket in her hands. She looks small, fragile in a way I’ve never seen. “I forgot,” she whispers. “The day of the wedding. The day after. Everything was so crazy, and I forgot to take it.”
She lifts her eyes to mine, wide and filled with panic. “Ben, I didn’t mean?—”
I can’t move.
I stand rooted to the floor, my arms heavy at my sides, my chest hollow.Pregnant.The word echoes again, amplified now that we’re alone with it, and I’m forced to face the future instead of the past.
Her face crumples. “You’re angry.”
“I’m not,” I say, but it sounds distant, foreign even to me. Isoundangry.
“You are. You hate this.” She turns away, making to get out of bed, struggling with her leg twisted in the blanket. “I swear I wasn’t trying to?—”
She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. I’ve been around long enough to see what young women will do to get into families with money.
But Maddie didn’t have to try; her familyhasmoney. She was already married to me. Even if—when—this façade ended, she’d be married to Derrick, guaranteed a place here.
She had no reason to trap me. No, this is my fault.
I shut my eyes, struggling for breath. I don’t hate it. I don’t even know what I feel. My mind is blank, frozen, caught between the jagged memory of loss and the impossible image of Maddie holding a child.
Our child.
I force myself to meet her eyes. She looks at me like she’s waiting for a verdict, braced for rejection. Exhausted at the edge of the bed.
I can’t give her anything. Not anger. Not comfort. Not hope.
I’m paralyzed.
“Rest,” I say finally, my voice hollow. “We’ll talk about all this later.”
Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak. She only nods, eyes skating to the pregnancy tests that Hugh picked up at the store shortly after Furman left.
I leave the room before she can see what I don’t know how to say—that I am terrified. That this isn’t a future I planned for, so late in my life.
Her.And a child.
Chapter 15
Madeline
The water is almost too hot, but that’s the way I want it. It releases the tight muscles in my calves and for once it feels like I might relax since Dr. Furman made his announcement.
Before I slip the rest of the way in, I pause and grab my phone. Type inCan you bathe in hot water while pregnant?
